Good times and bum times, David Cromer's seen 'em. The theater director followed his record-breaking production of Our Town off-Broadway with the total flop that was Brighton Beach Memoirs on Broadway and a perfectly fine Edie Falco/Ben Stiller House of Blue Leaves revival. Now the Chicago-based Cromer is back at the Barrow Street Theater, where Town used to live, for his next act: Nina Raine's Tribes, a surprising, entertaining and emotionally charged look at how one "conventionally unconventional" family of British intellectuals deal with the fact that the family's youngest member, who is deaf, has come back from school a grown man who wants to learn to sign. It is far more exciting than it sounds, trust us. As Cromer prepared for opening night, we caught up with him to talk about everything from supertitles in the round to exercise balls to saying "tits" on Gothamist.
Director David Cromer On Sign Language, Picking Props And "Genius" Money
David Cromer, Our Town
Thornton Wilder's groundbreaking 1938 play Our Town has been almost irreparably scarred by unbearably earnest high school drama club productions over the years. So it came as a bit of a surprise that Chicago director David Cromer—who won an OBIE for his rather sensational adaptation of The Adding Machine last season—would be reviving this old relic here in New York. But since opening Off Broadway all the way back in March, the production, night after night, has been eradicating any misconceptions that Our Town is just a hokey, Norman Rockwell Hallmark card to small town America.
Opinionist: The Atheist
Scandal-mongering reporter Augustine Early is an opportunistic parasite who'll do whatever it takes to get the scoop on a front page story—even if it means manufacturing the story himself. He's amoral, vindictive, and seemingly devoid of compassion. He's also, as it happens, a lot of fun to spend a couple hours with. In Ronan Noone's briskly entertaining one-man play The Atheist, the charismatic Campbell Scott brings a rakish charm and incisive wit to a role that, in the wrong hands, might have been simply repellent.
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